. The United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy suggested that social media should, like tobacco products, carry a surgeon general’s warning about the harm it can cause users. His call came amid a vigorous national debate about social media’s role in the reported nationwide decline in mental health among young people.
Murthy’s concern that social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok pose risks to individual well-being (particularly among youth) is shared by many. However, some people are skeptical. Meanwhile others debate national security risks. We wouldn’t be having this heated national discussion about the appropriate responses to social media platforms if they weren’t appealing, regardless of who is correct. Why are we so captivated by the social media experience?
We, biologists who have been using and studying social media for a long time, see a solution in our species’s evolutionary history. Humans have developed the technologies necessary to satisfy our evolved desires over the course of several millennia. Climate-controlled homes shelter us from wind, rain and snow. Our aches and pains are alleviated by medications. We evolved to crave foods high in fat and sugar in a world where there were few calories. We are now confronted with an epidemic of opioid misuse as we navigate junk food aisles on a daily basis. We have so successfully mastered our environment that we poison ourselves with too much of a good thing.
Information is experiencing a similar situation. After all, we are a species that seeks information. We spend our lives learning about our world and how to manipulate it. Individually, we forage, observing patterns, experimenting, identifying opportunities and threats, and putting our mental predictions to the test. We also forage together, copying and observing one another, teaching our children and peers, exchanging observations, gossiping, and attempting to comprehend the world as a whole. We’ve evolved to enjoy learning for the sake of learning. Evolution has influenced behaviors that, in some environments, are associated with reproductive success: sleep when tired, take shelter when cold, eat when hungry and have sex when feeling desire. These behaviors, learning included, increase our evolutionary fitness, so we have evolved to find them pleasurable.
For information seekers, social media is junk food
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